'The Getaway' joins 'Bullitt' as part of Warner's unofficial "Steve McQueen rocks your world in high-def" release blitz, and I actually think I preferred this one a little bit over its more well-known, highly-acclaimed cousin. did I mention that McQueen and MacGraw are totally hot together? Add to that an effective, gritty neo-documentary style, some very droll social commentary (check out the scene on the train between McQueen and the kid with the toy squirt gun) and a great, jazzy score by Quincy Jones, and this is another uber-hip McQueen vehicle that's easily up there with his best action efforts, including ' Bullitt' and 'The Great Escape.'
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The action is also too sporadic and even a bit campy at times, with MacGraw sometimes looking like she's channeling Kate Jackson in the original 'Charlie's Angels' TV series.īut nevermind that - 'The Getaway' still works, if only for three reasons: it's got style to burn, it's characters are all nasty and unrepentant anti-heroes, and. Peckinpah always took his time anyway, but the second act in particular drags, and the climax doesn't ever really shift into high gear in quite the same way as a 'Straw Dogs'. Which is not to say that the film doesn't have problems, starting with the pacing, which is likely far too slow for today's audiences. With 'The Wild Bunch' and 'Straw Dogs,' Peckinpah's characters work simultaneously as pulpy caricatures and believable, three-dimensional human beings ultimately done in by misplaced loyalties and reckless abandon. Carol/MacGraw and Carter/McQueen's feelings for each other are overpowering to the point of melting off the screen, so we do believe they'd be so head-over-heels stupid for each other that they'd land in such destructive predicaments. Admittedly, I found MacGraw's skills limited as an actress (she gives new meaning to the word "wooden"), but it ultimately matters little. Though technically McQueen and McGraw were not actually married at the time of 'The Getaway' (they got hitched soon after), their burgeoning love story is clear in every frame of the film. So the team hatches a plan to successfully pull off the robbery and elude the Sheriff, a feat which will, of course, prove a lot more difficult And neither does the team's accomplice Rudy Butler (Al Lettieri) or his daffy girlfriend Fran Clinton (Sally Struthers - yes, that Sally Struthers). Of course we know (and Carter knows) that Beynon doesn't really intend for the McCoys to walk away after the heist. But after Sheriff Beynon (Ben Johnson) helps arrange parole, Carter figures out the catch: Beynon expects a small favor in return - robbing yet another bank. McQueen is career criminal Carter McCoy, a soon-to-be-ex-con whose only reason for getting out and staying clean is his beautiful, resolutely loyal wife Carol (MacGraw). The story takes off right from the first scene. When these two appear in the same shot, the heat is palpable - 'The Getaway' didn't just blur any distinction between on-screen and off-screen chemistry, it erased it. Baldwin and Basinger don't come close to the incendiary sex appeal of the original's real-life husband-and-wife team of Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. It's superior in every way, from director Sam Peckinpah's lean-and-mean visual style to the red-hot chemistry of its lead actors. Happily, the 1972 version of 'The Getaway' easily wipes the floor with its evil modern doppelganger. Needlesstosay, it was hardly a great introduction to the film's concept, and didn't inspire high hopes as I sat down to watch the original.
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First off, a confession: before watching the next-gen editions of the 1972 cult classic 'The Getaway' for this review, my only previous experience with the movie was having seen the utterly dreadful 1992 remake starring the then husband-and-wife team of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
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